Book Review | Who Could that be at this Hour?: Captivating tale brings back beloved character

Wednesday

Oct 31, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 31, 2012 at 11:47 AM

What is a bombinating beast, and why would anyone make a statue of it, much less steal it, in a city nowhere near an ocean that's known as Stain'd by the Sea? These and other alliterative oddities are at the center of Who Could That Be at This Hour? - a page turner that marks the return of eccentric narrator Lemony Snicket.

What is a bombinating beast, and why would anyone make a statue of it, much less steal it, in a city nowhere near an ocean that’s known as Stain’d by the Sea?

These and other alliterative oddities are at the center of Who Could That Be at This Hour? — a page turner that marks the return of eccentric narrator Lemony Snicket.

The author was last heard from six years ago with The End to his 13-book “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

The events in Who Could That Be at This Hour? are no less fortunate. They do, however, turn back the clock to a time when phones plugged into a wall outlet, music played from vinyl records and Snicket — self-described as an excellent reader, good cook, mediocre musician and awful quarreler — was just 12 years old.

Despite his tender age, Snicket is an apprentice in a secret organization who, as he is constantly reminded by his chaperon, asks all the wrong questions as he tries to discover why someone would “say something was stolen when it was never theirs to begin with?”

The kickoff to the new four-book illustrated series, titled “All the Wrong Questions,” opens with an introduction that would probably be dismissed as third-grade drivel if not for the fame of the author who penned it: “There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a theft. I was living in the town, and I was hired to investigate the theft, and I thought the girl had nothing to do with it. .?.?.

I was wrong.”

So begins a contrarian story that unfolds near a sea with no water, a forest without trees and a city that’s mostly unpopulated.

The few people who live there are, of course, strange. There’s typewriter-toting tween journalist Moxie Mallahan, “sub-librarian” Dashiell Qwerty and a pair of kids named Pip and Squeak who operate the town’s sole taxi with one sitting in the driver’s seat atop a stack of books and the other down below, working the pedals.

The Snicket style of storytelling is exceptionally literary and entirely singular.

Characterized by linguistic playfulness and an appreciation for the archaic, Who Could That Be at This Hour? is frequently hilarious, as Snicket spars with his delightfully inept chaperon, who makes their investigation of the whereabouts of the missing statue far more complicated than it needs to be.

The black, gray and blue illustrations by celebrated cartoonist Seth only add to the throwback gumshoe vibe of the outrageous, long-overdue middle-grade follow-up series from a beloved narrator.

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